Stress

Stress

Stress affects most of us to some extent at one time or another in our lives. But, what is STRESS really?

TimerOrganizer

Stress is when your expectations are not Inlign with your reality. It may seem easy to just change your expectations, but that could lead down a path that is not in your best interest. What are your expectations? Are they realistic? If they truly are not realistic then write down what would be a more realistic expectation and see how close to your reality the new expectation is. However, if your expectation is realistic then you need to create a plan on how to make it a reality so that your expectations and your reality are in sync.

Many times we decide it is just easier to reduce our expectations, this can have the effect of not living our full potential and doing what is necessary to live a life that we truly intended to lead. Before you decide that your hopes and dreams are not possible, see what you can do to make them possible with a solid plan with benchmarks along the way.

TimerDiet

When you are working to get down to your ideal weight, stress can wreak havoc with those plans! Daily exercise is a great way to deal with day to day stress that most everyone feels. Make your weight loss goals weekly so you know how you are doing and write down what it is that you eat everyday including what time you ate and how you felt. If you are experiencing a significant amount of stress be sure to write it down and see if you are eating a well-balanced diet each and every time that you eat. Eating a well-balanced diet of dietary fat, protein, and carbohydrates will help reduce stress. Breathe deeply, eat well-balanced meals, daily exercise and you will be doing your best to keep stress from your weight loss goals.

TimerSavings

When it comes to money problems, lack of money is probably the number one stressor in our lives. Relationship problems are only a second because many relationship issues are money related. When finances are in check and the amount of money you have is the amount of money you need, there is rarely cause for stress related to finances. There are various ways to make sure you have enough money to keep the money stressors at bay.  It may seem like spending less money is the primary way of saving money, but so is making more money. Your standard of living is probably the easiest way to keep the money stressors at bay. Most people will find that their ability to increase their ability to make more money comes with an increase in desires to spend more money. If you can balance your desire to spend money with the need to save money you will help stave off the money stressors that affect so many. If you find that you are already too far into the money stressors, do not despair, there are a lot of options and you need to address all of them. 1) Drastically reducing unnecessary spending for everything. 2) Debt restructuring and lastly 3) Insolvency options (various degrees of bankruptcy)

Getting your finances under control is the best way to take control of your life again!

Sherri Sue Fisher, author of TimerDiet and TimerOrganizer and to be released TimerSavings

Grocery Shopping

This is our first blog with the new format! We will discuss a topic and how each of my books would address each. Today’s Topic is Grocery Shopping:

TimerDiet—TimerOrganizer—TimerSavings

Make Menus

When grocery shopping you want to make sure that you know what you are going to do with each item that you buy. How will each purchase be consumed? Do you have a purpose for each purpose that is well-balanced? Can you combine your purchase with other purchases or things you have at home that will make it well-balanced including dietary fat, protein, and carbohydrates. 

Each week when it is time to grocery shop take a few minutes to make some menus for the week. They don’t need to be specific—fish, green vegetable, and some rice the details can be decided later, based on the sale items. Perhaps it is taco night or pasta night…either way make sure that you include dietary fat, protein, and carbohydrates.  This includes your breakfast, lunches, and mini-meals (i.e. snacks)

Organize Your Fridge!

You may have so many groceries in your refrigerator and freezer that you have no idea what is good, expired, or even goes together to make a well-balanced meal. It is better to have less groceries in your fridge that you know are fresh and good for you than be filled with many foods that are “not in your best interests” or have already expired and will not be useful when it is time to make dinner.

Take 15 minutes with the trash can in hand and get rid of anything that you would not be willing to eat right now. In other words if you don’t think it is fresh today, then toss it. Now organize what you have left by areas that make sense to you! Some people like to organize by breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snacks, while others like to organize by products, cheeses, meats, salad mixings, cooking vegetables, toppings, etc. Whatever organization makes sense to you go for it, keep it, and make it work for you to save money and use all the groceries you bought instead of throwing them out because they went bad.

Save Your Money

Grocery shopping is the one area that you have the MOST control over your budget. You decide what you buy and how much you buy. I read a statistic that the average family throws out a little over $1,000 each year! Do you have something that you could spend $1,000 rather than the trash can? I know I do! I am not perfect I promise I have to deal with the same thing that all of us do. But, most of us don’t even realize what we are doing. We throw food out in the trash without realizing the actual $’s that we are throwing out. So when you are throwing out food, take a note pad and write down an estimate of how much you are tossing. So if something cost $10 and you used ½ of it then you would write down $5 as the amount that you wasted. Do this for at least a month and get to the point where you are throwing away less than 2% of your food budget. Life is all about choices and the wisest choice is to buy what you want AND need and to not waste any of it (well not much of it anyway!)

Sherri Sue Fisher, author of TimerDiet, TimerOrganizer, and coming soon TimerSavings